Looking into the future with ……..Eveline Wild and Stefan Eder from “Der Wilde Eder”

We, the Gleichenberg Tourism Schools, want to encourage our pupils and students to take their future into their own hands and to shape and improve it according to their own wishes. After all, the ability to do this is the most valuable asset that every young generation has.

In our series “Looking into the future with…”, we invite today’s visionaries, role models and key players to give us an insight into their personal vision of our future.

In the current issue, Eveline Wild and Stefan Eder from “Der Wilde Eder” tell us about their visions of the future.

1. Dear Eveline, dear Stefan, what does it mean to run a future-orientated company? What does it involve for you?

Eveline Wild: To be strong in the future, it is important not to forget our existing values – because we are not a high-tech start-up that wants to reinvent the world. Our origins lie in an old trade that is associated with many positive things – cosiness, having a good time, consistency.

In this respect, we should not forget that we are all human and that there is added value in being checked in by a real receptionist instead of a robot. We should look to the future with an open mind and try to develop good ideas. Being creative is a huge issue for us – if you copy something, you’re just the first to copy it. In this respect, we should come up with our own ideas but not forget the old, enduring values.

2. Our world is becoming ever more complex and hardly anyone still has an unrestricted positive view of the future. Where do you see the greatest opportunities and challenges for tourism and for our society in the next 20 years?

Eveline Wild: One of the biggest challenges is what I always affectionately call “the arms race”. Bigger SPAs, more rooms, more comfort, more luxury, more, more, more. That can’t always be the solution. Recently we had to tear out a room and there was nothing wrong with it. It’s a vicious circle: as soon as the renovation is paid off after 20 years, the dictates of trends and fashion force us to make new investments.

For me, there is no generally applicable solution to this – every business has to decide for itself – for me, the sustainability factor is what counts. The awareness of reduced consumption is growing among the population and with it the understanding that not every room has to reflect the very latest trend.

Finding and retaining employees is also a major challenge. People in the catering industry have always been a migratory group, so we are perhaps less affected than sectors that have had less of a struggle with staff turnover up to now. I’m not quite so gloomy on the subject. But when parents and influential people, such as teachers, advise children not to work in the catering industry, it’s worrying and unfair. Because we are paying for the mistakes that the industry has made in the past. There are clear societal thought patterns that include studying as the ideal career path for young people. If it’s an apprenticeship, then please do it after the A-levels! For me, this is almost a waste of time, life is so short. I also often notice that people get bored with their work very early on and are dissatisfied with their superiors or the team. I find this “I’m sure it’s better somewhere else” mentality problematic. No master has ever fallen from the sky. We know from sport or musical instruments that true virtuosity takes a lot of time and work. It’s exactly the same in professional life. I would like this job hopping to decrease again.
Regarding the opportunities in the next 20 years: It’s difficult to say, it has a lot to do with the mindset of the individual. Positive people have a positive environment and attract positive things, pessimists negative things. In this respect, everyone is responsible for how they shape the next 20 years. Tourism is a great industry in which you want to give people a good time during the best time of the year – their holidays. People want to be recognised – it’s not about perfect service, it’s about dealing with people, remembering little things, soft skills and solving problems charmingly. I think parents should encourage their children more to pursue their talents. Because there are social and open-minded young people who notice their counterparts and don’t just look through others or stare at their mobile phones. Conveying to the other person that nothing else is important at that moment – we all need to train ourselves much more in this perception. That is the quintessence with which you can inspire people and win regular guests and friends.

3. One of the most precious assets of our time is and will continue to be time. Although we have countless technical aids at our disposal that are designed to save time, we have less and less of it. Time is also an important topic for you in ZeitRAUM. What is the concept all about and what role will time play as a tourism product in the future?

Stefan Eder: ZeitRAUM is about finding the right approach to the topic of time. In our case, for example, the guest pays for time and its conscious perception and not for the food itself. At the beginning of the menu, we have an “iBrett/Pad” – a wooden board engraved with this classic view of the start screen of an iPad with apps – on which a dish is served to make people aware of how time-consuming technical devices are. Our menu then takes the guest on a journey through time – each course has a theme. At the moment, for example, we start a million years ago, with the domestication of fire and tell the culinary story of fire and smoke through smoked celeriac in celery stock, char matjes, apple and horseradish. This thematic sequence of courses is intended to make people aware of how valuable the time they can spend with each other is. From a tourism point of view, I can see that inflation is causing holidays to become shorter and shorter – we want to create an environment in which people can be more aware of this time. We have many regular guests who come several times a year for just a few days because they know the surroundings and can immediately get involved. If you then have a short journey, these few days can already have a great recreational value. Our region is not a classic tourist region where there is a lot to experience – so there is no stress of exploring, but people have time for themselves.

4. In general, guests’ wishes and needs are constantly changing. Nevertheless, we feel that we are in times of great upheaval. How will we have to adapt our tourism offering in Styria over the next 10-20 years in order to be successful?

Eveline Wild: We in Styria are on a very good path with our conviviality, cosiness and honest nature, but we should nevertheless be vigilant not to get caught up in “over-tourism”. We could quickly lose the values that we stand for. Of course you can always want more – more guests, more beds, more overnight stays, but 20 more beds are of little use if you can no longer make the guests happy. Furthermore, Styria is an incredibly great culinary destination and quality will always prevail in the long term.

5. How much do digital developments and trends currently determine your offering and how much will they determine it in the future?
   Eveline Wild: I have different experiences in this regard. At our hotel, we once had a digital guest directory containing the highlights of the area. This was very soon removed because it was not appreciated much. When people are on holiday, they want to be as analogue as possible – at least at our hotel. Guests seek contact with us and ask us questions before they look into a rectangular device. Where I see potential is in the things that happen in the back office – in other words, everything that has to do with search engines, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. You have to keep at it and use these platforms. A lot of AI-supported tools are currently popping up in the area of customer relationship management. We are trying not to miss out on anything – of course, it should be mentioned at this point that these tools are expensive and often unaffordable for a small company like ours. What is more obvious are tracking functions that allow users to view our content again and again. Such functions are particularly helpful for regular guest management – we are also very happy to embrace digital trends in this segment. The cost of attracting new guests is many times higher.

6. We live in a time in which digitalisation is increasingly determining our career paths, especially those of young people. The tourism and catering industry is a sector that is still essentially a craft. Will there be a return to craftsmanship in the future, and what should be done to achieve this?

Eveline Wild: As already mentioned, gastronomy is a trade and the decision to enter this industry is strongly influenced by one’s immediate environment. If work is seen as a burden, you always go through life with the basic attitude that your work primarily finances your leisure time. However, if work is seen as an enrichment of life that gives you the opportunity for self-realisation, you don’t need to worry about work-life balance. You enjoy what you do, feel that you have arrived and are more resilient in certain situations. And here again I appeal to families and teachers to convey to young people that an apprenticeship is not a burden but a great opportunity to shape their career path.

In conversations with young people, I realise that many of them already have concrete ideas about their future, so it’s all the better when these ideas are also supported by their family environment.

7. What does the tourism industry need to do to get young people more interested in the most beautiful profession in the world and in tourism training in the future? What do you think tourism training should include in the future that it lacks now?

   Eveline Wild: This question is particularly difficult. I think certain things are often over-regulated in Austria and it is not made easy for young people with a migration background to gain a foothold here. Although they are willing to work, they have to go through an odyssey to be allowed to start an apprenticeship and still have the constant fear in the back of their minds of being deported at some point – I can only shake my head. Regarding training: Recently, the discussion about vegetarian chef training has been on everyone’s lips. These things always sound good in theory, but they’re easier said than done because you have to create a vocational training programme, bring classes together and so on. I think problems should be solved in a more pragmatic way, otherwise we will always remain in entrenched structures. Politics is also needed here. Of course, an appeal could be made to the chambers. But many active restaurateurs don’t sit in them because they are busy with their own business and have little time for political engagement. So here too – fewer meetings, a focus on results and solutions and the willingness to try things out – that would be a good thing.

8. On the subject of schools: For us as employers, the situation surrounding summer interns is often challenging. Some seasonal businesses may make a living from it, but for us as an annual business, it’s difficult because the young people are gone as soon as they’ve been trained. If it turns out in discussions about their future that most of them want to continue in the area of management and hotel management, I question how useful an internship in the kitchen is. All in all, there is a lot of potential for action. I think talks are needed where employers, employees, schools and legislators sit down together and discuss their different interests and needs when it comes to training in the catering industry.
9. What advice would you give young people for planning their career and how to manage to look positively into the future and master it?

   Eveline Wild: That’s an exciting question and I have to play the ball back to you somehow. I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as career planning. You can have a vision of what you want your life to look like. My vision was to beautify the world and I could just as easily have become a gifted florist, graphic designer or fashion designer because all of these things contain the quintessence of making something beautiful. Breaking down your own vision into one sentence can help you learn to deal with all the adversities that come your way in the course of life, instead of stubbornly focussing on a career path. One goal or another may not work out, unexpected things can happen, and you can’t plan for all that in a career plan.

10. In Austria, we have not yet developed a good culture of failure – it starts at school, where you are graded and mistakes are a bad thing, even though mistakes have the potential to show you where you still need to develop.

Thank you for the interview!